A little update on my personal life

I've been writing less than I'd like to; I have loads of notes and ideas, but when I have the time to write, I don't have the energy, and vice versa. Hurricane season is always a rough time for people with problems like fibromyalgia, arthritis, and similar issues, as, even up here in New York State, we experience the rapid progression of pressure changes that wreak havoc with joints and sinuses.

Additionally, I've had a very busy month with my business; when I'm not directly involved with a client, I still have to do promotion, taking care of the animals, and fielding requests to adopt unwanted reptiles. We JUST took in a beautiful adult Savannah monitor, and while I'm glad we will have him for presentations, it means I have another cage to build or buy, another type of food to keep on hand, and more poop to scoop (and boy, is it some nasty poop!). We also adopted some blue-tongue skinks, and we'll be working on a breeding project for them, and we've been asked to take in an adult boa constrictor, which I may decide against.

Of course, we're still fostering cats and kittens, and at one point in the past month, we actually had eleven fosters total, including the family of cats and kittens mentioned in this post. I am very happy to say that the situation discussed in that post worked out very well. The head of the rescue bent a few rules so that we could help those cats, and we were able to find homes for all of them! The family did want one of the cats returned to them after her kittens were weaned and she was spayed, which is something we don't usually do, but that particular mama cat really wanted to be with her original family anyway--she was very happy and relieved when I brought her back to her people. One of the kittens turned out to be deaf (as are 60-80% of white cats with blue eyes), and was adopted by a wonderful young woman who has experience living with a deaf cat. Two of the cats were adopted by another friend of mine, and they integrated very nicely into her family. The remaining kittens were adopted by great folks, and it's all worked out very well.

There have been ups and downs, of course. In the past week, both I and the foster coordinator ended up with FIV positive cats in end-stage liver failure. If we hadn't been there for those cats, they probably would have died alone and outside, slowly and painfully; instead, we were there to give them loving hands until the very end. Our boy purred from the moment we met him to the moment he passed, despite the fact that he must have been feeling terrible. We gave him love, and received his love, and that, really, was all he'd wanted in his last moments. I have no regrets about meeting him and being there for him; our time with him was a gift to both him and us.

Finally, we currently have five very crazy, bouncy, purry, adorable kittens. We kept them for an extra few days to make sure they were healthy; I don't like sending them out for adoption right after they're spayed and neutered if I haven't had them in my care before--I'd rather hang on to them and wait to see if they have an upper respiratory infection or some other issues, than send them home with an adopter potentially ill. So, until Saturday, we have some WILD THINGS in the foster room!

Things here have been busy, but not really bad, just lots of stuff going on. I've been neglecting my poor camera, so I don't have any decent pictures of the babies to share. I do have a lot on my mind to write about, and when I've got my head together, I'll put together some decent blog posts for y'all. I hope everyone is doing great out there.

A day in the life

Today, I had a booking for my small business. I awoke with my alarm, and took a pain pill, resetting my alarm for half an hour later, so I could get up once the pain medicine kicked in. Without it, I have a hard time getting up even to use the restroom, and I usually hold it as long as I can just to avoid the pain of getting up and going.

Half an hour after the first alarm, the second one goes off. I can get up now; it still hurts, but not as much. I pull the clothing I want out of my closet and dresser, but don't put them on right away; clothes are actually painful to me, and I'd rather get some other things done first (I bathe/shower at night, so that my hair will be dry by morning). Using hypoallergenic cosmetics, I put my face in order so I no longer look like a painting from Picasso's Blue Period. I pull on part of my clothing, and go downstairs to pack the rolling rubbermaid bin I need for my gig.

Using a written list, I make sure I haven't forgotten anything important; I've done this many times, but I still need to make sure the brain fog doesn't make me omit a key part of my repertoire. The bending and lifting I have to do for this is causing my lower back to protest, but I keep moving, grabbing a small bit of food on the way out.

I have to load the bin into my car, which I can do--I'm strong--but it hurts. My lower back feels like a knife has twisted in it, and it continues broadcasting pain signals even after I've settled into the driver's seat. Driving is a particular nuisance; the use of my body in this way often gives me leg cramps, a spasming back, neck pain, and a headache. Fortunately, my drive today is less than five minutes, and I arrive at my destination no worse for the drive, for once.

I haul the bin out of the car, along with a couple of bags that had been on the front seat. I try to pick up the bin's handle, but my purse is on that shoulder, and it slides down. Stupidly, I slide my purse back up and try to pick up the handle again, repeating this three or four times before my logic circuits burn through the brain fog and tell me to put the purse on the OTHER shoulder.

Once at my gig, I set up quickly, then use my spare time to read the novel I'd brought along. The time comes, and I perform well, as usual. This is the easy part for me; it comes naturally and easily. After I'm done, I receive applause, and many audience members come up afterwards to personally thank me, and to tell me how much they enjoyed it. I accept their compliments graciously, and then thank them for being there.

I leave some literature with the person who organizes events for that client, then pack up and haul the bin back out to my car. It feels heavier than it was before, even though it's technically lost some mass. My back can't take much more than this, and when I get home, I feel my abdominal muscles giving way this time as I lift the bin back up to the porch. I'm still not done, though; I have to get its contents put away--it's not a task that can be left until later. More bending, kneeling, lifting, and it's done. And so am I.

The fat-hating boss from hell

The job was tempting because it offered full-time work, at a wage equal to what I was getting, and health insurance kicking in after a few months of employment. I was getting tired of my other job because, well, it sucked. Another story, another day. The employer seemed reasonable, his store was beautiful, and I did have a great time for a while. I loved most of my coworkers, except the European girl who treated me like garbage because I wasn't constantly on a diet like she was. She actually gave me a chocolate bar for a Christmas gift, saying, "You'll like it, because it's food." She also hated Americans, finding them disgusting, rude, and irritating. No, don't ask me why she immigrated here. I don't know either.

The worst part of that job, though, wasn't the snotty dieter, but the boss, who had a nasty temper, and would lose his shit at the smallest thing. I was screamed at--obscenities and all--for being too polite to a customer that he didn't like. He threw objects at his employees--if something didn't have a price tag, for example, he hurled it at the nearest person, screaming and accusing us of being lazy idiots. If something was too complicated for him to understand, we took the brunt of his rage--and it was ten times worse if we were able to figure it out. I got the shit end of that stick, having more experience than he did in the subject, and having been educated as well.

The worst part about this man was not just his abusive, nasty temper; it was his bigotry. He would say, "I'm not racist," then turn around and use the n-word to describe a black person he didn't like. He was one of those people who really thought that he wasn't racist as long as it was only the bad black people that he called n-word. He also called my Jewish doctor, a wonderful, intelligent, compassionate man (which made the boss hate him soooo damn much), a schmuck to his face, but he claims he didn't know what it really meant. Whatever.

Even that, however, pales in comparison to what he did to his sister. She was a very large woman who lived on the other side of the country. The boss was disgusted by his sister's size, and firmly believed that she was going to die within the next week if she didn't stop being fat RIGHT THIS MINUTE.

Now, let me sidetrack for a moment and talk about some customers we had. They were a married couple, both very fat, who had both undergone gastric surgery. They both had the "safer" band surgery, and boss-man thought this was the greatest thing. He talked to them at length about it to find out all kinds of information. About a week after he talked to them, one of them, then the other, ended up in the hospital with complications. They both had to be cut back open, and one had a pretty serious infection. They were absent from the store for quite a while because of this, and the item they'd had on layaway had to be postponed, then cancelled with money back because of their health problems. The boss did not even acknowledge that the gastric surgery had been problematic, and he was nicey nice to their faces when they came to get their money back, but skewered them behind their backs for being irresponsible with money, because he'd lost the sale. Yeah, the guy is a real schmuck.

Back to his sister, though! After getting hyped up about gastric surgery because of those two customers, he proceeded to write his sister a letter. He told her in this letter that it was time she did something about her weight, and that he wasn't going to let her ignore the "problem" any longer. He then said that if she did not get gastric surgery, he would disown her and never talk to her again. He then sent the letter Certified Mail so that she could not claim that she hadn't received it, and awaited her response. I did foolishly point out that gastric surgery had a lot of risks, and had a high rate of complications and death, but I should have just kept my mouth shut; I was pooh-poohed and told that the banding surgery was TOTALLY SAFE, and it was worth the risk for his sister to do it. And yes, he did do all of this letter writing and bitching behind the counter at the store, where we were all working, using his employees as an audience for his anger.

I'm sorry to say that I don't know how this resolved, because I quit very soon after that. I'd had it with his cruelty and hatred, and couldn't take it anymore when there was a final straw (long long story, and I promise to share it eventually). I do hope, however, that he made good on his promise to never speak to her again, because, if he were my brother, I'd consider it to be a blessing. Boss's sister, if you're out there, I want you to know that it's not your fault that he's a giant asshole, and you did not deserve what he did to you. Being fat is not a crime, and it is not an excuse for being treated inhumanely.

Management Series Part 2: Interlude

Before I go on to suggest what I think could make life better for employees and employers, I wanted to describe some of the behavior I have personally seen on the part of supervisors and bosses:

- Demand that hospitalized employees "get back to work"

- Insist that contagiously sick employees come to work and infect everyone else

- Keep "secret" files on employees that they aren't permitted to see (but threaten them with what's in those files constantly! "I'm documenting this!")

- Pit employees against each other, creating animosity

- Use abusive language toward employees, including obscenities

- Throw items at employees, from small items like paperclips to large ones like chairs

- Demand that they work overtime, then scream at them because payroll's high

- Intimidate workers into working in unsafe conditions

- Intimidate subsequently injured employees into not reporting the injuries, or belittle them for their injuries and tell them to man up and get back to work

- Comment, ridicule, and lecture employees on personal, private matters such as their dietary habits, weight, religion, hobbies, health (I have had several employers tell me what medications/herbal supplements I should be taking, becoming angry when I didn't take their suggestions, or when I DID and didn't get better)

- Allow favored employees to break rules without consequence

- Allow or encourage favorites to physically or verbally bully other employees

- Allow favorites to work while intoxicated and even operate heavy machinery such as forklifts and manufacturing equipment

- Sexually harass employees

- Hire friends and family and don't hold them to the same standards/rules as others

- Be intolerant of disabled employees, even when their disability was disclosed in the hiring process

- Use racist language, including the N word (that's a story I will be telling soon, promise)

Yes, a lot of these behaviors are illegal. The processes for making a complaint or getting justice are often so complex or expensive as to be inaccessible to many aggrieved workers. Officials, especially elected ones, often have a financial or political incentive to side with the employer.

Think about it. How often do you hear of friends or family encountering an illegal behavior from a supervisor or boss--or how many times have you encountered them personally? How often do they pursue legal action? If they do figure out the channels for making a proper complaint, or hire a lawyer, how many times have you heard of someone winning a case or getting positive results?

The only times I've actually heard of positive outcomes in these situations have been when unions are involved. My father, a postal worker, taught me that bad managers in the USPS get a visit from union representatives if they are treating employees in illegal ways. But, for the most part, the rest of the employers in the US seem to have a great deal of freedom to physically, psychologically, and financially destroy their workers, with repercussions being rare in proportion to the number of offenses.

What have you seen? What has happened to YOU? I want to hear about it.

Management Series Part 1

I have had a number of very bad supervisors in my lifetime. Some of them were blatantly abusive, while others were passive aggressively unhelpful. I'm going to have a several-part series on some of the things I've experienced, and how I think employee/employer relationships can and should be improved.

In many of the places I have worked, there is a strong culture of blame instead of an atmosphere of problem-solving. In a non-union workplace, it's so easy to fire an employee that there is little incentive for an employer to try to re-train the employee and work with him or her to keep them around.

In many cases, each mistake follows the worker like a shadow. They can't shake it, and they can't fully redeem themselves with achievement. Maybe they were late to work last month, but came in early every day since, plus doubled their productivity. When they're late again one day, all the good in-between will count for nothing; all that will matter are the two late infractions (and, often, this turns into, "You're ALWAYS late" on the supervisor's part).

I have found that many supervisors are less inclined to work on positive development of their employees--and they are pretty much programmed to only register infractions. They look for a reason to exercise their authority, and they don't have much incentive to reward good work. Any supervisor I've known to "document" an employee's behavior has only written down negative things. An employee file is a laundry list of infractions, to be used as a reason to fire them later. Not on that list are the late nights stayed to finish a project, the time that employee came up with an idea that saved everyone's ass, or even a notation that they are supremely good at particular aspects of the job that give others trouble.

Management strategies of US employers basically consist of negative reinforcement (unless it's a favored employee) and instilling a fear of termination. I believe that this is wrong on many levels. It is a source of psychological and emotional trauma and distress. It doesn't help people truly develop good work skills. It is also irresponsible to society as a whole by creating instability for families and individuals. If an employer had incentive to work with an employee to improve their skills and work ethic, the employee would be less likely to become unemployed, and if they did change jobs for other reasons, the new employer would not have to work with unmanaged poor skills and work ethic.

As it is, "bad" workers who do not learn to work smarter and better are shunted from one job to another, not picking up the training needed to improve. They may end up on welfare, or they may end up turning to crime to support themselves and their families. If one or two employers had actually taken the time and effort to train them--and really train them, not give them a series of worthless "punishments", they might have become a better worker.

I'm not saying that there aren't some people who just aren't going to learn, no matter what you do; they're out there, for sure, and they'll be what they are. But I really believe that the majority can be helped--and there needs to be a responsibility somewhere to help them. If no one steps up to the plate to take them on, then that worker becomes everyone's problem--on public assistance, or committing crimes, or bouncing from one job to another, wreaking havoc on every workplace they temporarily occupy.

I don't know all the answers, but soon I will have some suggestions--after an interlude.

I guess I need to get my head out of the trough of Big Macs

So, you could have your paycheck docked if you're fat.

I actually would LOVE to have someone follow me around for a week and see how I actually eat. Hint: It doesn't involve McDonald's, a gallon of ice cream per day, or mountains of chocolate bars. :P

Breakfast today: a 6-oz container of yogurt

Lunch today: about 5 oz. of "Gimme Lean" brand vegetarian sausage, cut into pieces and sauteed in about a half tablespoon of olive oil

Dinner tonight: Mini pizzas made of English muffins, Boboli sauce, and a little bit of aged provolone. I'll probably have two, each of which is half a muffin with toppings. And I might have a scoop of ice cream for dessert because I LIKE IT. I usually make some vegetarian dish with fresh vegetables and eat that with rice, but I am low on fresh stuff right now (Saturday morning necessity: The Farmers Market).

At some point, I'll have a snack of grapes, a plum, or whatever kind of fruit is lurking in the fridge (Brian went to the store yesterday, so maybe we have PEACHES!)

This is fairly normal to me; I sometimes am not feeling well enough to eat breakfast, and sometimes not even lunch.

I AM SUCH A PIG!

Edited to add: I just realized that the headline was "being unhealthy* could cost you money"--NOT "being fat". Oh, the powers of assumption.

*emphasis mine

Edit #2:
Edited to add: If they truly believed in weight-loss as a health issue, and they really believed that it could be accomplished with traditional methods, then the docked pay would be made available to the employee if they applied it toward weight-loss (gym membership, Weight Watchers membership, doctor bills, medication). Since they're not doing this, it really and truly looks like a money grab to me.

Art Fair in Albany, NY

I am going to be selling photography at a booth at this art fair on Wednesday, August 8! If you are in the area, stop by on your lunch break. It's a good location if you're a state worker :)
http://www.albanyevents.org/more_events/index.cfm?ID=33

Summer in the City Art Fair 2007

Wednesdays: August 1, 8, 15, 22, 29

Academy Park (across from City Hall)

11:30 am to 2:30 pm

Art exhibits by local artists Musical entertainment Artwork available for purchase

August 1 - Musicians of Ma'alwyck

August 8 - Larry Stevens

August 15 - Sara & Weston Raab

August 22 - Spiral Tango

August 29 - Gravikord Duo

Ad decision

I recently made the decision to put a tiny adsense box in my sidebar. I am currently not working, having been laid off after reporting a work injury (THAT'S a long story), and I'm having trouble finding work that will accommodate my physical limitations. Going on disability is a pretty difficult and lengthy process, but I will be talking to my doctor about its feasibility. I'm also looking into starting a small aquarium maintenance business. I don't need to be wealthy; I just want enough to keep my head above water.

The tiny amount of revenue the ads will generate might help with that. I was going to just have my Etsy store link, but I haven't sold anything out of it yet, so it's not working. I was also pleased with how unobtrusive Google's ads are. I guess they understand that obnoxious, unpleasant ads are repellent to people. I especially hate the "paymybills.com" ads with their horrible graphics and tendency to make my computer vomit!

So, I hope my adsense doesn't offend anyone. I'm very poor right now, and I need all the help I can get.

I'm a Flour Girl

So, my current (temp, with the option to become permanent) job involves lots of flour. Flour can be seen suspended in the air, and a white dusting coats everything--the walls, the floors, the equipment, the people, absolutely everything. It's a constant battle to keep the place clean. Most of the cleaning is done with brushes and dust mops. The equipment, however, gets flour in the crevices and controls. When flour gets wet, it turns into glue; the hotter the water, the more gluey it is (because it becomes glutenized). This sticky mixture then dries into a cement-like hardness, so you cannot use water for major cleaning.

At the end of the day, the guys get out compressed air hoses and blow all of the flour out of the equipment and against the wall. The dust pile is then swept up, followed up by a dust mop, and finally a wet mop (with Simple Green). We never wet mop before the bulk of the flour is removed, though, because that would be a sticky, gluey, pointless task.

In my lab, I use paintbrushes to remove dust from surfaces and equipment, then wipe everything down with a damp cloth before I use any kind of cleaner. When I am washing my labware, I do a cold water rinse on everything before using hot water and soap to scrub. If I forget and use hot water to clean my salt test vials, I say a lot of foul words, then get out the bottle brushes to painstakingly remove the pasty mess from the corners.

I had never thought about how flour would be moved around a factory, but now that I know, I think it's pretty neat. They actually use pipes! I'm not kidding--there are pipes taking the flour from the silos, through the sifter, and into the mixing machines. I was really confused--flour is a SOLID, so it can't really be pumped like water through pipes. What I hadn't known at first was that there are augers inside the pipes. In addition to the augers, there are blowers that keep an air current going through the pipes in the direction of flow to prevent clogs. It's pretty neat.

Flour arrives two ways: Tractor-trailer and rail car. They look like the tanker trucks/rail cars that one normally associates with fuel transport. We get a truck about twice a week with one type of flour, and a fresh rail car about every two weeks. The trucks carry about 50,000 pounds of flour, while the rail cars hold about three times that much.

They come from the Port of Albany via Horizon Milling. When we get a shipment, I have to take a sample of the flour, and whoever was on the loading dock also gives me the seal and paperwork. The seal is a metal or plastic item similar to a zip tie. It can't be undone except for being cut. If the seal is broken, we cannot accept the shipment, so the supplier and driver are very interested in making sure that the seal is intact upon arrival. Each seal has a serial number, which I write down before discarding the seal. I put my sample through an NIR (near infra-red) machine to make sure the protein, moisture, and ash content are within specifications, and I keep whatever's left in a "library" of samples. The library is cleaned out of old items periodically, but they are kept for a pretty long time in case we have a problem.

A cool thing about Horizon Milling is their webcam. They have falcons nesting on one of their mills, and they set up a great page to show off their fleet-flighted residents.

I hope that you found at least some of this interesting. My current work has taught me a few new things, but I'm not sure how useful a lot of them will be to my future!

New Job

I recently quit my job at the aquarium store because the boss/owner was, to put it delicately, in need of something along the lines of Seroquel. I was offered a job at a factory doing quality assurance on their product (a flour/yeast based dry product, I won't say more than that). It's fairly easy, as lab tech jobs go, and the environment is friendly and clean. I'm replacing someone who, for unfathomable reasons, simply stopped doing her job entirely about a month ago, and had been doing almost the bare minimum for over a year. I walked into a situation that needed a serious cleanup and reorganization before I could actually get any real work done, so I have been interspersing the quality assurance work with major cleaning and organizing. I stunned the guys at the factory by catching up on lab samples so much that I am waiting on them to make product for me to test every day.

I worked pretty hard on Monday and Tuesday (today). I cleaned the lab from top to bottom and reorganized all the cabinets. I threw away a LOT of junk. The previous tech had never washed the plastic beakers after doing the proof tests (letting dough rise to test the yeast activity). So there were layers and layers of tape, petrified dough, and Pam spray (it becomes tacky and nasty if not washed away). I scrubbed the ones that were not too bad, but I had to throw out a LOT of them because they were just unsalvageable. I found a drawer full of sauce packets (old, disgusting ones), menus, and unwashed flatware. She had squirreled away a lot of personal mail in the lab as well--two years' worth of pay stubs, time warner bills, nastygrams from her kid's school ("he's a brat, so we're suspending him"), and some kind of "I'm poor, give me money" government form. Also, I found a pair of shoes, bottles of lotion, a dirty toothbrush and toothpaste, some weight loss pills, and some feminine hygiene products. The items that were not spoiled food were put into a box with her name on it. I really hope she has the sense to be embarrassed that someone else had to put her tampons in a box for her.

Other items I threw out: Empty cans of Pam (hi, TOSS IT IN THE TRASH instead of sticking it in a cabinet, it's EASIER!), chains of paperclips that were used as decorative garland (and tacky/sticky with flour and Pam), plastic containers that were warped beyond recognition from being microwaved, a toddler's sippy cup, Vogue magazines, a paper with various non-work-related websites (myspace, classmates, etc) with usernames and passwords, and test mixes dated 2005 (this means she hadn't been doing that test since 2005). I bagged up a bunch of stuff that had been in cardboard boxes that were falling apart and filthy, and I wiped every surface in the room, because there was a layer of flour on everything, including the chair, computer keyboard and mouse, and the paperwork binders. The floor was scrubbed, and I was surprised to discover that I did NOT, in fact, have the only non-field laboratory with a dirt floor; there was tile under the layer of blackened, greasy filth. I also found out that the oil sampling dipstick (a pole about 7 ft long that has a bottle at the end for sampling out of soy oil delivery trucks) was actually a white object, not grey and black camouflage as it had appeared. Apparently, if you scrub oily, dirty things with this magic stuff called soap, it can become clean. What's more disturbing is that the grimy, blackened pole was going into the oil that was to be used for food products. I don't know WHY the hell nobody said anything about that, but, yuck! Also, it now hangs up on the wall instead of being put on the floor. I have this compulsion about stuff that is going into food products being on the floor and not washed. I'm just weird like that.

Anyway, I inventoried and labeled the cabinets and drawers, filed paperwork that was long overdue to be filed, and managed to get all the other work done too. If they choose to hire someone else instead of making me permanent, they will be missing out. Right now, I'm a temp working for a lab support agency. The company needed to get someone in there pronto to rectify the situation after a major quality assurance issue, and they've invested a lot of money in the crash-course training I got. It wouldn't be cost effective to hire someone else and have to train them, if I'm already doing a good job. I never, however, rely on anyone to use common sense, so I'm keeping my options open.